Activities
Back at the Jaipur Literature Festival
1–5 February, 2024 | Jaipur, India | Festival Link
It was great to be back at the JLF and share the stage with Bhutanese author, film star, and artist Kelly Dorji. We also shared a book launch for the Hindi edition of Namita Gokhali’s Mystics and Sceptics. A terrific conversation and really wonderful week.
Living Treasure: Honoring Janet Gyatso
I am pleased to announce the publication of Living Treasure: Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in Honor of Janet Gyatso (Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, Wisdom Publications): a new collection of 29 essays I co-edited with Holly Gayley to recognize Janet’s extraordinary contributions to the fields of Buddhist studies, Tibetan studies, and religious studies more broadly.
Table of Contents
From the Introduction
“Since her earliest publications in the 1980s, Janet Gyatso has contributed to the fields of Tibetan and Buddhist studies as one of the most creative and influential thinkers of her generation. Her academic writing covers a wide range of Tibetan and Buddhist thought and practice, including doctrinal and literary history, medicine and modernity, poetics and the arts—as well as theoretical issues in the study of religion writ large. Her initial doctoral research on the traditions of Thangtong Gyalpo (1361–1485) and writings on treasure literature (gter ma) and the practice of Severance (gcod) were followed by groundbreaking monographs on Tibetan autobiography and, more recently, systems of Tibetan medical knowledge. She is currently a leading voice in theorizing the literary dimensions of Buddhist writing as she engages in collaborative conversations around the influence of kāvya in Tibet and the practices and processes of translation. Her work exemplifies the marriage of philological deftness, analytical acuity, and intellectual rigor that has established novel lines of inquiry and inspired generations of scholars. In moving beyond traditional silos of academic exposition, Janet has not only opened up new intellectual terrain for exploration in the study of Buddhism and Tibet, she has also made them available to broad communities of readers.
Indeed, Janet has pushed the next generation to communicate beyond our areas of specialization and to engage more theoretically in substantive directions that matter widely across the humanities. As always, she led the way: bringing treasure revelation into conversation with semiotics, contesting Eurocentric notions of autobiography, exploring Buddhist monastic and Tibetan medical notions of the third sex, arguing for the rise of an early modern episteme in seventeenth-century Lhasa, and, most recently, tending to animal ethics within and beyond Buddhism. Across the decades, Janet has modeled an interdisciplinary approach to Tibetan studies that engages broader theoretical concerns in relationship to Tibetan religious discourses and practices. But not in the extractive sense of using Tibetan raw materials to distill into universalizing academic theories. To the contrary, the movement more often went the other direction, challenging the universality of Eurocentric claims and championing the sophisticated theories and rhetorical strategies of the Tibetan visionaries and cleric-scholars like Thangtong Gyalpo, Jigmé Lingpa, and Desi Sangyé Gyatso, whom she has admired and read so closely. Crucially, within the male-dominated textual tradition, Janet has always sought out women’s perspectives and the destabilizing presence of the feminine and non-normative genders.
The task we gave to the contributors to this volume echoes the call Janet has made throughout her career: to write in more theoretically sophisticated and broadly relevant ways. We thus encouraged authors to write in a creative, impactful manner that highlights a specific issue or problematic, to break new theoretical ground, or offer new research data, while remaining accessible to a broad audience—in particular scholars and students outside of Tibetan and Buddhist studies.”
Project Himalayan Art: Buddha and Milarepa
The Rubin Museum of Art’s major new initiative Project Himalayan Art has launched with the digital publication of Himalayan Art in 108 Objects. This is an extraordinary collection of images and contextualizing essays that span the history and geography of the Himalayan cultural world. The entire collection is freely available online at Project Himalayan Art. A printed version of the book will be released June 2023.
I contributed 2 essays. The first presents the earliest extant printed edition of Milarepa’s life story from 1538: A Tibetan Liberation Tale Illustrated in Print and Manuscript.
The second essay introduces a monumental mural of the Buddha’s life story from Puntsokling Monastery in Tibet, designed by the luminary Tāranātha Kunga Nyingpo: Tāranātha’s Vision of Shakyamuni’s Quest.
The Journal of Tibetan Literature
I’m excited to announce the launch of the Journal of Tibetan Literature. This is a project I’ve developed for the past 2 years in collaboration my co-editor Kurtis Schaeffer (University of Virginia), and managing editor Tenzin Dickie.
The Journal of Tibetan Literature (JTL) is a biannual, peer-reviewed, open access academic journal dedicated to publishing research, translation, and criticism on all aspects Tibetan-language texts from the origin of the written language to the present. JTL publishes research articles, long-form essays, literary criticism, translations, conference notes, and brief communications.
This inaugural issue includes eleven contributions, including critical essays from Janet Gyatso and Lama Jabb; research articles by Leonard van der Kuijp, Gedun Rabsal and Nicole Willock, and Brandon Dotson; translations by Rongwo Lugyal, Sarah Harding, Lowell Cook, and Lama Jabb; an interview with Gedun Rabsal (with video), and more.
JTL is supported by Tsadra Foundation and published in cooperation with the Buddhist Digital Resource Center.
The Journal of Tibetan Literature is available at journaloftibetanliterature.org
Read a review of the Journal of Tibetan Literature in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review: “Redefining Buddhist Literature.”
In Memoriam
Hubert Decleer (1940–2021)
Welcome. I’m glad you found this memorial for my dear teacher, mentor, and friend Hubert Decleer. I wrote it together with Benjamin Bogin and Dominique Townsend. I first met Hubert when I was a student on the School for International Training’s Tibetan Studies program. That was the spring semester of 1988, the program’s inaugural year. I was later fortunate to serve as co-academic director (together with Hubert) of the Tibetan Studies program from 1993-1999. In 2014, I co-edited a volume of academic essays in his honor titled Himalayan Passages. Hubert touched the lives of many. If you knew him, feel free to leave a memory in a comment below.
In Memoriam: Hubert Decleer (1940–2021)
With great sadness, we share news that our incomparable teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend Hubert Decleer passed away peacefully on Wednesday, August 25. He was at his home with his wife, the poet Nazneen Zafar, in Kathmandu, Nepal, near the Swayambhū Mahācaitya that had been his constant inspiration for nearly five decades. His health declined rapidly following a diagnosis of advanced-stage lung cancer in May, but he remained lucid and in high spirits and over the past weeks he was surrounded by family members and close friends. Through his final hours, he maintained his love of Himalayan scholarship and black coffee, and his deep and quiet commitment to Buddhist practice.
Hubert’s contributions to the study of Tibetan and Himalayan traditions are expansive, covering the religious, literary, and cultural histories of Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and India. For nearly thirty-five years he directed and advised the School for International Training’s program for Tibetan Studies, an undergraduate study-abroad program that has served as a starting point for scholars currently working in fields as diverse as Anthropology, Art History, Education, Conservation, History, Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Public Policy. The countless scholars he inspired are connected by the undercurrent of Hubert’s indelible “light touch” and all the subtle and formative lessons he imparted as a mentor and friend.
Hubert embodied a seemingly inexhaustible curiosity that spanned kaleidoscopic interests ranging from Chinese landscapes to Netherlandish still lifes, medieval Tibetan pilgrimage literature to French cinema, 1940s bebop to classical Hindustani vocal performance. With legendary hospitality, his home, informally dubbed “The Institute,” was an oasis for scholars, former students, artists, and musicians, who came to share a simple dinner of daal bhaat or a coffee on the terrace overlooking Swayambhū. The conversations that took place on that terrace often unearthed a text or image or reference that turned out to be the missing link in the visitor’s current research project. When not discussing scholarship, Hubert inspired his friends to appreciate the intelligence and charm of animals—monkeys and crows especially—or to enjoy the marvels of a blossoming potted plum tree. His attentiveness to the world around him generated intense sensitivity and compassion. He was an accomplished painter and a captivating storyteller, ever ready with accounts of the artists’ scene in Europe or his numerous overland journeys to Asia. The stories from long ago flowed freely and very often revealed some important insight about the present moment, however discrete.
Hubert François Kamiel Decleer was born on August 22, 1940, in Ostend, Belgium. In 1946, he spent three months in Switzerland with a group of sixty children whose parents served in the Résistance. He completed his Latin-Greek Humaniora at the Royal Atheneum in Ostend in 1958, when he was awarded the Jacques Kets National Prize for biology by the Royal Zoo Society of Antwerp. He developed a keen interest in the arts, and during this period he also held his first exhibition of oil paintings and gouaches. In 1959 he finished his B.A. in History and Dutch Literature at the Regent School in Ghent. Between 1960 and 1963 he taught Dutch and History at the Hotel and Technical School in Ostend, punctuated by a period of military service near Köln, Germany in 1961–62. The highlight of his military career was the founding of a musical group (for which he played drums) that entertained officers’ balls with covers of Ray Charles and other hits of the day.
In 1963 Hubert made the first of his many trips to Asia, hitchhiking for thirteen months from Europe to India and through to Ceylon. Returning to Belgium in 1964, he then worked at the artists’ café La Chèvre Folle in Ostend, where he organized fortnightly exhibitions and occasional cultural events. For the following few years he worked fall and winter for a Belgian travel agency in Manchester and Liverpool, England, while spending summers as a tour guide in Italy, Central Europe, and Turkey. In 1967 he began working as a guide, lecturer, and interpreter for Penn Overland Tours, based in Hereford, England. In these roles he accompanied groups of British, American, Australian, and New Zealand tourists on luxury overland trips from London to Bombay, and later London to Calcutta—excursions that took two and a half months to complete. He made twenty-six overland journeys in the course of fourteen years, during which time he also organized and introduced local musical concerts in Turkey, Pakistan, India, and later Nepal. He likewise accompanied two month-long trips through Iran with specialized international groups as well as a number of overland trips through the USSR and Central Europe. In between his travels, Hubert wrote and presented radio scenarios for Belgian Radio and Television (including work on a prize-winning documentary on Nepal) and for the cultural program Woord. The experiences of hospitality and cultural translation that Hubert accumulated on his many journeys supported his work as a teacher and guide; he was always ready with a hint of how one might better navigate the awkward state of being a stranger in a new place.
With the birth of his daughter Cascia in 1972, Hubert’s travels paused for several years as he took a position tutoring at the Royal Atheneum in Ostend. He also worked as an art critic with a coastal weekly and lectured with concert tours of Nepalese classical musicians, caryā dancers, and the musicologist and performer Michel Dumont.
In 1975, during extended layovers between India journeys, Hubert began a two-year period of training in Buddhist Chinese at the University of Louvain with pioneering Indologist and scholar of Buddhist Studies Étienne Lamotte. He recalled being particularly moved by the Buddhist teachings on impermanence he encountered in his initial studies. He also worked as a bronze-caster apprentice and assistant to sculptor—and student of Lamotte—Roland Monteyne. He then resumed his overland journeying full time, leading trips from London to Kathmandu. These included annual three-month layovers in Nepal, where he began studying Tibetan and Sanskrit with local tutors. He was a participant in the first conference of the Seminar of Young Tibetologists held in Zürich in 1977. In 1980 he settled permanently in Kathmandu, where he continued his private studies for seven years. During this period he also taught French at the Alliance Française and briefly served as secretary to the Consul at the French Embassy in Kathmandu.
It was during the mid 1980s that Hubert began teaching American college students as a lecturer and fieldwork consultant for the Nepal Studies program of the School for International Training (then known as the Experiment in International Living) based in Kathmandu. In 1987 he was tasked with organizing SIT’s inaugural Tibetan Studies program, which ran in the fall of that year. Hubert served as the program’s academic director, a position he would hold for more than a decade. Under his direction, the Tibetan Studies program famously became SIT’s most nomadic college semester abroad, regularly traveling through India, Nepal, Bhutan, as well as western, central, and eastern Tibet. It was also during this period that Hubert produced some of his most memorable writings in the form of academic primers, assignments, and examinations. In 1999 Hubert stepped down as academic director to become the program’s senior faculty advisor, a position he held until his death.
Hubert taught and lectured across Europe and the United States in positions that included visiting lecturer at Middlebury College and Numata visiting faculty member at the University of Vienna.
Hubert’s writing covers broad swaths of geographical and historical territory, although he paid particular attention to the Buddhist traditions of Tibet and Nepal. His research focused on the transmission history of the Vajrabhairava tantras, traditional narrative accounts of the Swayambhū Purāṇa, the sacred geography of the Kathmandu Valley (his 2017 lecture on this topic, “Ambrosia for the Ears of Snowlanders,” is recorded here), and the biographies of the eleventh-century Bengali monk Atiśa. His style of presenting lectures was rooted in his work as a musician and lover of music—he prepared meticulously to be sure his talks were rhythmic, precise, and yet had an element of the spontaneous. One of his preferred mediums was the long-form book review, which incorporated new scholarship and original translations with erudite critiques of subjects ranging from Buddhist philosophy to art history and Tibetan music. His final publication, a forthcoming essay on an episode contained in the correspondence of the seventeenth-century Jesuit António de Andrade (translated by Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling in 2017), uses close readings of Tibetan historical sources and paintings to complicate and contextualize Andrade’s account of his mission to Tibet. This exemplifies the spirit and method of his review essays, which demonstrate his deep admiration of published scholarship through a meticulous consideration of the work and its sources, often leading to new discoveries.
In addition to Hubert’s published work, some of his most endearing and enduring writing has appeared informally, in the guise of photocopied packets intended for his students. Each new semester of the SIT Tibetan Studies program would traditionally begin with what is technically called “The Academic Director’s Introduction and Welcome Letter.” These documents would be mailed out to students several weeks prior to the program, and for most other programs they were intended to inform incoming participants of the basic travel itinerary, required readings, and how many pairs of socks to pack. The Tibetan Studies welcome letter began as a humble, one-page handwritten note, impeccably penned in Hubert’s unmistakable hand.
Hubert’s welcome letters evolved over the years, and they eventually morphed into collections of three or four original essays covering all manner of subjects related to Tibetan Studies, initial hints at how to approach cultural field studies, new research, and experiential education, as well as anecdotes from the previous semester illustrating major triumphs and minor disasters. The welcome letters became increasingly elaborate and in later years regularly reached fifty pages or more in length. The welcome letter for fall 1991, for example, included chapters titled “Scholarly Fever” and “The Field and the Armchair, and not ‘Stage-Struck’ in either.” By spring 1997, the welcome letter included original pieces of scholarship and translation, with a chapter on “The Case of the Royal Testaments” that presented innovative readings of the Maṇi bka’ ’bum. Only one element was missing from the welcome letter, a lacuna corrected in that same text of spring 1997, as noted by its title: Tibetan Studies Tales: An Academic Directors’ Welcome Letter—With Many Footnotes.
Hubert was adamant that even college students on a study-abroad program could undertake original and creative research, either for assignments in Dharamsala, in Kathmandu or the hilly regions of Nepal, or during independent-study projects themselves, which became the capstone of the semester. Expectations were high, sometimes seemingly impossibly high, but with just the right amount of background information and encouragement, the results were often triumphs.
Hubert regularly spent the months between semesters, or during the summer, producing another kind of SIT literature: the “assignment text.” These nearly always included extensive original translations of Tibetan materials and often extended background essays as well. They would usually end with a series of questions that would serve as the basis for a team research project. For fall 1994 there was “Cultural Neo-Colonialism in the Himalayas: The Politics of Enforced Religious Conversion”; later there was the assignment on the famous translator Rwa Lotsāwa called “The Melodious Drumsound All-Pervading: The Life and Complete Liberation of Majestic Lord Rwa Lotsāwa, the Yogin-Translator of Rwa, Mighty Lord in Magic Intervention.” There were extended translations of traditional pilgrimage guides for the Kathmandu Valley, including texts by the Fourth Khamtrul and the Sixth Zhamar hierarchs, for assignments where teams of students would race around the valley rim looking for an elusive footprint in stone or a guesthouse long in ruins that marked the turnoff of an old pilgrim’s trail. For many students these assignments were the first foray into field work methods, and Hubert’s careful guidance helped them approach collaborations with local experts ethically and with deep respect for diverse forms of knowledge.
One semester there was a project titled “The Mystery of the IV Brother Images, ’Phags pa mched bzhi” focused on the famous set of statues in Tibet and Nepal and based on new Tibetan materials that had only just come to light. Another examined the “The Tibetan World ‘Translated’ in Western Comics.” Finally, there was a classic of the genre that examined the creative nonconformity of the Bhutanese mad yogin Drugpa Kunleg in light of the American iconoclast composer and musician Frank Zappa: “A Dose of Drugpa Kunleg for the post–1984 Era: Prolegomena to a Review Article of the Real Frank Zappa Book.”
Frank Zappa was, indeed, another of Hubert’s inspirations and his aforementioned review included the following passage: “If there’s one thing I do admire in FZ, it is precisely these ‘highest standards’ and utmost professional thoroughness that does not allow for any sloppiness (in the name of artistic freedom or spontaneous freedom)…. At the same time, each concert is really different, [and]…appears as a completely spontaneous event.” Hubert’s life as a scholar, teacher, and mentor was a consummate illustration of this highest ideal.
Hubert is survived by his wife Nazneen Zafar; his daughter Cascia Decleer, son-in-law Diarmuid Conaty, and grandsons Keanu and Kiran Conaty; his sister Annie Decleer and brother-in-law Patrick van Calenbergh; his brother Misjel Decleer and sister-in-law Martine Thomaere; his stepmother Agnès Decleer, and half-brother Luc Decleer. A traditional cremation ceremony at the Bijeśvarī Vajrayoginī temple near Swayambhū is planned for Friday.
**UPDATE** The cremation ceremony has been changed to Monday, August 30 at 8:00 am, next to the Bijeśvarī Vajrayoginī temple near Swayambhū. Apparently, the body rested for several days without signs of decay.
Benjamin Bogin, Andrew Quintman, and Dominique Townsend
Portions of this biographical sketch draw on the introduction to Himalayan Passages: Newar and Tibetan Studies in Honor of Hubert Decleer (Wisdom Publications, 2014)
On Saturday November 6 we held a virtual memorial for Hubert where family, friends, colleagues, and students gathered to share their reflections. A video of the event is posted below, together with a separate video for the slide show we incorporated into the memorial. (The introduction to the memorial was inadvertently not recorded, and there was a small break midway through due to an internet disruption.)
Virtual Memorial
Slideshow
Flames of My Homeland Exhibition Talk
Feb 23, 2021, 4:30 PM | Wesleyan University | flamesofmyhomeland.org
Exhibition curators Ian Boyden ’95–a visual artist, poet, translator–and William Frucht, Executive Editor for Political Science at Yale University Press, will discuss the lives of Tsering Dorje and Woeser, the intersections of art and politics, and the interpretation of photographs across geographic and cultural distance. Moderated by Andrew Quintman, Associate Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University.
Tsering Dorje (1937–1991), a native Tibetan, served as an officer in the People’s Liberation Army. His black and white photographs provide a rare visual record of the violence perpetrated in Tibet during a period of book burnings, political rallies, and public struggle sessions. His daughter, widely known by the single name Woeser, is a poet, essayist, and photographer, and is a leading Tibetan public intellectual in China. Her work ranges from political criticism to reflections on Buddhist belief and practice, and the challenges of inhabiting both Chinese and Tibetan cultural worlds.
The exhibition incorporates photographs by Tsering Dorje and Woeser, and a set of original collaborative works by Woeser and Ian Boyden ’95, featuring multimedia installations. The exhibition is curated by Boyden, William Frucht, and Associate Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies Andrew Quintman.
Physical exhibition in Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University. Feb 24 to April 1, 2021.
A virtual exhibition may be found at flamesofmyhomeland.org.
Flames of My Homeland Exhibition Opens at Wesleyan
Feb 23, 2021 | Wesleyan University | flamesofmyhomeland.org
Flames of My Homeland
The Cultural Revolution and Modern Tibet
Works by Tsering Dorje, Tsering Woeser, and Ian Boyden
Tsering Dorje (1937–1991), a native Tibetan, served as an officer in the People’s Liberation Army. His black and white photographs provide a rare visual record of the violence perpetrated in Tibet during a period of book burnings, political rallies, and public struggle sessions. His daughter, widely known by the single name Woeser, is a poet, essayist, and photographer, and is a leading Tibetan public intellectual in China whose work ranges from political criticism to reflections on Buddhist belief and practice, and the challenges of inhabiting both Chinese and Tibetan cultural worlds.
The exhibition incorporates photographs by Tsering Dorje and Woeser, and a set of original collaborative works by Woeser and Ian Boyden ’95, featuring multimedia installations. The exhibition is curated by Boyden, William Frucht, and Associate Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies Andrew Quintman.
Physical exhibition in Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University. Feb 24 to April 1, 2021.
A virtual exhibition may be found at flamesofmyhomeland.org.
Beyond Belief: Roundtable on the 14th Dalai Lama
Dec. 28, 2020 |BBC 4 Radio | Beyond Belief Radio Program with Ernie Rea
A roundtable discussion in the life of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and the prospects for the lineage in the future. With Kate Saunders, Robbie Barnett, and Ven. Lama Lobsang Samten.
Listen HERE. (28 min.)
Translating Tibetan Buddhism
November 23, 2019 | American Academy of Religion, San Diego
Translation is fundamental to religion and to the study of religion. Despite a growing body of literature theorizing the study of religion and its relationship to the practice of translation, currently there is not AAR unit devoted to translation. Translation thus remains an undertheorized practice at the AAR despite its centrality to Religious Studies. This exploratory session addresses this lack by leveraging the intense energy currently running through the field of Tibetan Buddhist Studies, which has become a major cultural, economic, and intellectual force within the sphere of global Buddhism. We propose to bring together stakeholders to critically assess the past, present, and especially the future of translation. We seek to promote translation practice as a conceptually rich space in which to reflect upon multiple scholarly, philosophical, social, cultural, and political issues in the study of and global engagement with Buddhism, and in the study of religion more broadly.
Andrew Quintman & Kurtis Schaeffer, Presiding
Panelists: Daniel Aitken, Holly Gayley, Amelia Hall, Sarah Harding, Sarah Jacoby, Anne C. Klein, Marcus Perman, Dominique Townsend, Sangseraima Ujeed, Nicole Willock, Tom Yarnall
Notes on the Performance and Programmatics of Mgur
13 July, 2019 | International Association of Tibetan Studies Conference, Paris
Delivered at the panel Mgur: Songs of Realization in Tibetan Culture.
The past half century has witnessed a florescence of research on the poetic form of songs of realization (mgur), primarily through the identification and translation of a widening circle of major literary sources. Contemporary scholarship has addressed the genre of mgur from a multiplicity of perspectives: the history and classification of mgurand its relationship to other Tibetan verse forms; the formal analysis of content and structure of individual mgur and mgur collections; and the aesthetic interpretation of mgurstyle and artistry; and these are in addition to more traditional forms of Buddhist doctrinal commentary. And indeed, here we are today—most in this room have contributed.
Read more “Notes on the Performance and Programmatics of Mgur”Mapping Religious Lives in the Himalayan Borderlands
11 July, 2019 | International Association of Tibetan Studies Conference, Paris
Delivered at the roundtable on Mapping Tibet: Past, Present, Future.
The places associated with a life, set forth in literature, can also be read on the ground as a kind of biographical text. The notion of a geographic biography is thus useful as a means for teasing out the relationship between Tibetan life writing and sacred geography while critically addressing received notions about the forms they inhabit.
Michel de Certeau has suggested that the narratives of a saint’s life story are a “composition of places,” charting an itinerary of departures and returns that ultimately come to define the life through the places it inhabits. In past years, I have worked (and published) on the intersections of text and terrain in the recording of an individual’s life. In particular, I have been looking at sites of transformation in Mi la ras pa’s biographical narratives, arguing for what might be called a geographic biography. I suggest that the topography of Mi la ras pa’s life constitutes an important (but frequently overlooked) form of life writing in its own right.
I further suggest that the topography of Mi la ras pa’s biographical tradition was unstable, subject to both change and revision much like the tradition literary biography As individual locations evolved over time, they appear to have served as powerful sites for remembering episodes of the yogin’s life story and for re-recording how those stories were told. The sites of transformation in the geographic biography thus reveal a dialogical relationship between a life story recorded on paper and a life imprinted on the ground. Biographical narratives may landscape the terrain, but sacred sites in turn serve to re-imagine how those narratives can be written and read.
Digital Reflections of the Buddha: A Life in Text…
June 4, 2019 | Yale Center for British Art
Delivered at The Future of Images Symposium on IIIF standards held at the Yale Center for British Art.
Summary From the Organizers
On June 4th, 2019, Yale hosted a daylong program entitled “The Future of Images at Yale: Introducing Yale’s new Image Standard” to demonstrate to nearly 200 faculty, staff and students the potential offered by the Yale Library and Museums’ shared commitment to implementing IIIF-enabled images across their collections.
International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) is a model for seamlessly gathering, presenting and annotating digital images from collections at Yale and around the globe. IIIF allows scholars and users to bring together images from collections cordoned off in discrete catalogs and it will eventually provide a cornerstone of an integrated cross-collections search and discovery platform at Yale. This image framework also solves the problem of delivering high-quality large-scale images over the web by nimbly requesting pieces of images as requested for deep-zooming by the IIIF viewer tools, instead of accessing/ downloading unwieldy large image files.
Read more “Digital Reflections of the Buddha: A Life in Text and Many Images”A Brief Survey of Tibetan Buddhist Poetry and Translation
December 19, 2018 | Renmin University, Beijing
The Great Deeds of the Buddha: A Seminar on…
December 18, 2018 | Tsinghua University, Beijing | Seminar Report 1, Seminar Report 2
“Life of the Buddha” Project Overview: Digital Frameworks for Preservation and Analysis”
“Exploring the Life of the Buddha in the Jonang Murals and Texts”
19 Ways of Looking at Milarepa
November 19, 2018 | American Academy of Religion, Denver
Translation is a multivalent process. A translation is a reading, an interpretation, an argument about the text, its author, its time and place, and about its reception in the new spaces the translator imagines herself to be placing the text. A close reading of all available translations of a given verse, for instance, reveals, potentially, as many imagined authors, times, places, doctrines, and world systems breathing life into the text as there are translations. This roundtable panel takes its inspiration from the epitome of such work: Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz’s 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (Asphodel Press, 1987), a slim book that provocatively comments on nineteen translations of four lines of Chinese Buddhist nature poetry. Through a close reading of multiple English renderings, Weinberger and Paz elicit the ways in which, “a translation is more than a leap from dictionary to dictionary; it is a reimagining of a poem. As such, every reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader’s intellectual and emotional life. As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different—not merely another—reading” (43).
In this roundtable, our task is to similarly reflect on a few lines of verse attributed to Milarepa, Tibet’s earliest and most famous Buddhist poet. We ask, how might an English translation evoke emotional responses, or reflect comparable religious aspirations attributed to the Tibetan source? How do choices about the tone and timbre of a translation—reflected by word order, meter, rhyme scheme—alter a poem’s religious meaning, or transform its efficacy as a vehicle for religious transmission? To what degree can we consider the poems ascribed to a Buddhist teacher, in Tibetan or English, to be Buddhist? If translation is “a reimagining of a poem,” the roundtable participants seek to illuminate how the translation of Tibetan Buddhist poetry entails reimagining the very nature of religious expression itself. This becomes especially acute in literature where environment, feeling, experience, doctrine, and ethics are so concisely bound together in a single discourse. How do we make sense of this synthesis in Tibetan religious poetry, and how does translation work within this process of making sense?
Lotsawa Tibetan Translation Workshop
October 5-8, 2018 | University of Colorado, Boulder | Workshop Website
Mountain Echoes: Himalayan Literature Festival
August 22–25, 2018 | Thimphu, Bhutan | Festival Website |
Peripheral Visions: An Indian Buddha in the Tibetan Imaginaire
May 4, 2018 | Asia Society, New York | Event Link |
Keynote lecture for the international symposium “Moving Borders: Tibet in Interaction with Its Neighbors”
In conjunction with the exhibition Unknown Tibet: The Tucci Expeditions and Tibetan Painting.
The Greatest Story Ever Told: Meditators, Madmen, and the…
May 9, 2018 | Zhejiang University |
Inaugural lecture for the Centre for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, International Campus.
New Directions in the Study of Tibetan Buddhist Art…
April 28–29, 2018 | Harvard-Yenching Institute | Harvard University |
“Painting Manuals (bris yig) as Transmedial Texts”
Jaipur Literature Festival
25–29 January, 2018 | Jaipur, India | Festival Website |
“Milarepa: The Master and His Teachings”
Narrative Paintings from Central Asia to the Himalaya
23 October, 2017 | Musée Cernuschi, Paris | Conference Website |
“Writing the Visual: Translating Buddha Life Narratives from Text into Image”
Accounts of the Buddha’s final life are ubiquitous across Tibet. Among the most extensive and striking are those in the corpus of literary and visual materials produced by the seventeenth-century luminary Tāranātha Kunga Nyingpo (1575–1634) at his monastic seat of Phuntsokling in the Tibetan region of Tsang. This paper examines Tāranātha’s work entitled A Painting Manual for the Hundred Acts of the Teacher, Lord of Śākyas (Ston pa shākya dbang po’i mdzad brgya pa’i bris yig). This text exemplifies the little-studied genre of Tibetan writing known as the painting manual (bris yig). In it, Tāranātha self-consciously bridges two sets of Buddha vitae: his literary narrative in 125 chapters called The Sun of Faith (Dad pa’i nyin byed) and the narrative murals executed in his monastery’s second floor gallery, covering some 150 square meters, referred to as “the Boundless Design” (bkod pa mtha’ yas). The Painting Manual covers the entire arc of the Buddha’s life story as told in The Sun of Faith, and contains scene-by-scene instructions for its visual representation. Tāranātha’s Painting Manual thus inhabits in a middle ground between two media, effectively translating text into image. This paper draws on Tāranātha’s writings and a complete site documentation of his murals to reflect upon the different kinds of stories textual and visual narratives tell, and how the translation from one to the other leads to new forms of storied knowledge.
Jaipur Literature Festival at Boulder
September 15–17 | Boulder, CO | Festival Website |
“The Life of Milarepa: From Text to Practice”
Illuminating Carefree Awareness: Tibetan Poetry Collections and the Landscape…
August 20–25, 2017 | Toronto | Conference Website |
International Association of Buddhist Studies XVIIIth Congress
Panel on Literatures of Contemplation (organized by Andrew Quintman & Kurtis Schaeffer)
Tibetan Translation and Transmission Conference
May 31–June 3, 2017 | University of Colorado, Boulder | Conference Website |
“Fidelity and Innovation in Translation”
“Translating Tibetan Poetry & Poetics: Kāvya in Tibet”
Tibetan Poetry and Poetics
May 12–14, 2017 | Latse Library |
Religion and the Literary in Tibet Workshop
10th in a continuing series of workshops on Tibetan Literature.
More information here.
Desegregating Digital Humanities Research and Teaching
November 19, 2016 | American Academy of Religion, San Antonio |
Panel: The Digital Futures of Religious Studies
HH Tai Situpa Visits Yale
October 6, 2016 | Yale University |
His Holiness the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa visited Yale, toured the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, met with several student groups, and delivered a public talk “Meditation in the Modern World.”
More information here.
Life of the Buddha Project in 2016 Yale ITS…
September 16, 2016 | Yale University |
The Life of the Buddha Project appeared on the cover of the 2016 Yale ITS Annual Report and was featured prominently in the online version.
Frontier Lamas and Monastic Networks in the Himalayan Borderlands
June 25, 2016 | Bergin, Norway |
Panel on “Trans-Himalayan Corridors” organized by Hildegard Diemberger and Andrew Quintman
14th Congress of the International Association of Tibetan Studies
The Life of the Buddha in Literature, Art, and…
May 6, 2015 | Yale Center Beijing | Event Link |
“Yale Center Beijing Launches ‘Asia in the World’ Lecture Series” (Yale News)
Slideshow from the Council on East Asian Studies
How to Read the Life of a Buddhist Saint
May 5, 2016 | Renmin University, Beijing |
Universities as Agents of Sustainable Conservation
April 12, 2016 | UN Global Colloquium, Yale University | Event Link |
UN Global Colloquium on the Preservation of Cultural Heritage
Sustainable development —the concept of meeting the world’s current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same—is of growing importance in times of rapid social transformations, global climate change, and economic uncertainty. This satellite workshop will address important challenges on the way towards sustainable conservation, in all three dimensions of sustainability: economic, ecologic, and social.
In the presence of already existing UN organizations/platforms, what role might a university consortium serve to provide solutions for sustainability in preservation? How can universities create and maintain interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary networks for addressing issues of sustainability in conservation, mitigating challenges of mitigation and adaptation for creating resilient societies, and forming links to UN sustainable development goals?
Putting the Buddha to Work: Śākyamuni in the Service…
March 31, 2016 | University of Chicago | Event Link |
South Asia Seminar Talk, Foster Hall 103, 4:30 pm
The Yogin and the Madman Receives Honorable Mention for…
February 12, 2016 | Association for Asian Studies |
The Yogin and the Madman receives Honorable Mention in the 2016 Association of Asian Studies’ E. Gene Smith Book Prize.
The Life of Milarepa Available as Audiobook
December 21, 2015 | Audible link |
The Life of Milarepa (Penguin Classics 2010) is available for the first time in audiobook form.
Religion and the Literary in Tibet Workshop 5
October 17–18, 2015 | University of California, Berkeley |
Continuation of a long-running project. More information here.
The Making of Milarepa
September 10, 2015 | Tibet House |
Public book talk on The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa
7:00 pm | 22 West 15th St, New York, NY
There is a suggested donation but I have requested that all proceeds go toward earthquake relief in Nepal.
Buddhism on the Edge: Locating Premodern Religion on the…
July 3–5, 2015 | Yunnan Minzu University, Kunming, China | Workshop Link |
Workshop on Exploring New Grounds in Himalayan Studies
Two-Year Collaborative Research Fellowship from ACLS-Ho Foundation
June 1, 2015 | Yale University | Award Link |
Andrew Quintman & Kurtis Schaeffer receive a 2-year ACLS-Ho Foundation Collaborative Research Fellowship in Buddhist Studies for “The Life of the Buddha at Jonang Monastery: Art, Literature, and Institution.”
Project website: lifeofthebuddha.org
The Yogin and the Madman Receives Yale Prize for…
May 28, 2015 | Yale University |
The Yogin and the Madman receives Yale University’s 2015 Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for outstanding scholarship.
Illuminating the Yogin’s Path: Manuscript Illustrations in Tibetan Biography
April 16–17, 2015 | University of Virginia | Conference Link |
Conference on Books and Readers in the Pre-Modern World
The ubiquity of the book in literate societies can blind us to its complex social and cultural functions in particular times and places. The materials out of which books are made, the physical form that they take, the way scripts and images are inscribed on their surfaces, the kinds of texts they preserve, and the means by which they are circulated, consumed, and even performed can illuminate economic and environmental conditions, ideological agendas, and the ways networks function within and between cultures. Studies of book culture have increased exponentially in recent years, and the aim of this conference is to offer an inter-disciplinary, cross-cultural analysis of the status quaestionis in dialogue with one exceptionally influential volume, Harry Gamble’s Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts, which in 2015 will mark its twentieth anniversary.
Visit to Yale by HH the 17th Karmapa Ogyen…
April 6–10, 2015 | Yale University | Event Link |
A four-day visit to Yale University by His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. Activities include His Holiness’s Chubb Fellowship Lecture “Compassion in Action—Buddhism and the Environment”.
More information about the visit, news reports, and a photo gallery can be found here.
The Buddhas of Jonang: Literature and Art in the…
February 17, 2015 | Yale Himalaya Initiative | Event Link |
A talk in the Yale Himalaya Initiative Seminar Series, Yale University
Room 202, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave
Borderland Buddhism: Locating Pre-Modern Religion in/on the Himalayan Frontier
December 8–10, 2014 | Hong Kong |
Asian Borderlands Research Network Conference
Panel: Border Politics, Identities, and Scholarship Across the Himalayas—a Further Call for “Critical Border Studies.”
The Yogin and the Madman Receives AAR Book Award
November 23, 2014 | American Academy of Religion, San Diego |
The Yogin and the Madman receives the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion.
Remarks from the awards committee:
“It is eminently readable, engagingly written, while displaying impeccable scholarship. I am by no means familiar with Tibetan biographical literature and know next to nothing about Milarepa. But in this book, Mila does indeed come alive! through the author’s cogent analysis of the multiple readings of his biography in differing historical circumstances and of how these readings shaped and reshaped the Buddhist consciousness. This book can be read with interest by all those similarly interested in the place of biographical literature in other religious traditions (as I am) but also by nonspecialists.
The Yogin and the Madman got me excited to read primary text material about Milarepa, someone I’d never thought about twice previously. I found the author’s argument layered and nuanced in its thought. I thought it was written nicely, with a level of sophistication and maturity not found in a lot of textual studies. The author drew richly from the primary texts, and the primary texts (both in terms of their content, reception, and deployment) are at the heart of his argument. The book also includes original translation work by the author. Finally, it made me appreciate what texts contribute to the study of religion broadly.”
Translating Poetic and Inspirational Materials
October 4, 2014 | Keystone, CO | Event Link |
Translation and Transmission Conference
Keystone, Colorado, 2-5 October 2014
Panel overview and audio recording
The Making of Milarepa
October 1, 2014 | University of Colorado, Boulder |
A book talk on The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa
University of Colorado, Boulder
British Studies Room, Norlin Library, 5:00 pm
Free and open to the public
The Yogin and the Madman: On Writing and Reading…
May 29, 2014 | Trace Foundation | Event Link |
A book talk on The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa
Trace Foundation, 132 Perry St., Suite 2B, New York, NY
Free and open to the public